The problems of data security in digital marketing

Spambots

Spambots may harvest email addresses from contact or guestbook pages. Alternatively, they may post promotional content in forums or comment sections to drive traffic to specific websites.

Malicious chatterbots

Dating service websites and apps are havens for malicious chatterbots. These chatterbots pretend to be a person, emulating human interaction, and often fool people who don’t realize they are chatting to harmful programs whose goal is to obtain personal information, including credit card numbers, from unsuspecting victims.

File-sharing bots

These bots take the users’ query term (such as a popular movie or artist’s album) and respond to the query stating that they have the file available for download, providing a link. The user clicks on the link, downloads, and opens it, and unknowingly infects their computer.

Credential stuffing

This refers to bots “stuffing” known usernames and passwords (usually sourced from data breaches) into online log-in pages to gain unauthorized access to user accounts.

DoS or DDoS bots

This is where excessive bot traffic is intentionally used to overwhelm a server’s resources and prevent a service from operating.

Denial of inventory attacks

These attacks target online shops to list their products as ‘not available’. In this type of attack, malicious bots access the shopping cart, select items from the online store, and add them to the shopping cart, never completing the transaction. As a result, when a legitimate user wants to buy the product, they receive an out-of-stock message, even if the item is in stock.

Vulnerability scanners

Bots which scan millions of sites for vulnerabilities and report them back to their creator are known as vulnerability scanners. Unlike genuine bots that would inform the website owner, these malicious bots are specifically made to report back to one person who then sells the information or uses it themselves to hack websites.